3/4/09

Bobby vs The Volcano: Elaborating on the Republican response.

As Governor Bobby Jindal pointed out in his rebuttal to the president’s speech to congress, Obama’s budget contains some items of pork like Volcano Monitoring. Obama would have the government warn people if they were going to be engulfed in molten lava, obviously having the government try an save the lives of its citizens is socialism.

A closely related piece of Government Pork is the fire departments around the country. The Obama plan calls for money to be given to State Governments, some of which will no doubt end up in local governments, which will put some money into the hands of the local fire departments. Fire Departments take money from the government and use it protecting the local residents from having their houses burn down, There couldn’t be a more tangible example of taxpayer dollars being used to help the local citizens or Socialism.

Before un-American Socialist’s like Ben Franklin started pushing for firefighters to be under the control of government as well as regulating chimney sweeps, fire fighters were part of a profitable business.

Marcus Licinius Crassus ran a very successful fire department in 1st century BC. His business model was to have his fire crews ready and when a fire broke out he would rush out and offer to buy the burning property, obviously at a slight discount as they were on fire. He would then have his men put out the fire, fix up the property and sell it for substantially more than he bought it for.

Turning the Fire Departments over to a private business venture like a modern Crassus works well with the current Republican budget plan of Johnny Isakson to give a $15,000 subsidy for Flipping Houses.This would really invigorate the housing market if someone could own the fire department and buy the burning buildings for a fraction of their value and get a $15,000 subsidy for doing that.

The great thing about this plan is the money for the subsidy could come from the money that people used to pay to have a fire department to keep them safe.

I’m not quite sure what the business model Governor Jindal has in mind for a private enterprise to take over the business of keeping people safe from Volcanoes, but I’m sure it is similar.